POETRY.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2365, 1 November 1881, Page 3

POETRY.

HELIOTBOPE. Amid the chapel's oheckered gloom She laughed with Dora and with Flora, And chattered in the lecture room— The saucy little eophomora Yet while (as in her other school) She was a privileged transgressor, She never broke the simple rules Of one particular professor. But when ho spoke of vp.ried lore, Paroxytones and modes potential, She listened with a face that wore A look half fond, half reverential. To her that earnest voioe was sweet; And though her lovehadnooonfessor, Her girlish heart lay at the feet Of that particular professor. And he had learned, among his books That held the lore of ageß olden, To watoh those ever- changing looks, The wistful eyes, and tresses golden. That stirred his pulse with passion's pain, And thrilled his soul with soft desire, Longing for youth to come again, Crowned with its coronet of fire. Her sunny smile, her winsome ways, Were more to him than all bis knowledge, And she preferred his words of praise To oil the honors of the college.

Yet " what am foolish I to him ?"* Bhe whispered to her one confessor. "She thinks me old, and gray, and grim," In silence pondered the professor. Yet once, when Christmas bells were rung Above ten thousand solemn churches, And swelling anthems grandly sung Pealed through the dim cathedral arches — Ere home returning, filled with hope, Softly she stole by gate and gable, And a sweet spray of heliotrope Left on his littered study table. Nor came ahe more, from day to day, Like sunshine through the shadows rifting Above her grave far, far away, The ever silent snows were drifting. And those who mourned her winsome face Found in its stead a swift successor, And loved anothor in her plaoe— All, save the silent old professor. But, in the tender twilight gray, Bhut from the sight of carping critic, His lonely thoughts would often stray From Vedio verso and tongues Semitic. Bidding the ghost of perished hope Mock with its past the sad possessor Of the dead spray of heliotrope That once she gave the old professor. —" Actia Columbiana."